Summary: An Aboriginal engraving of a fish hooked on a line, on a vertical rock along Calabash Creek.

A vertical rock face along Calabash Creek has an engraving of a fish, which has very deep grooves.

The engraving was first recorded by R.H. Mathews in 1896 who wrote that the engraving:

…evidently intended to represent a fish caught on a line. Collins, in his Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, published in 1798, speaks of the aborigines fishing with hooks made out of oyster shell and fishing lines made from the bark of a tree. The length of this fish is 4ft 9in. There is a large ventral fin and two short, incised lines projecting from the belly, probably intended for fins. There are five lines drawn across the body, and the two eyes are shown on the same side of the head, a mode of representing the eyes often observed in native pictures of animals.

The long line extending from its mouth across the rock is 17ft 5 inches in length.

There may be more engraved figures; McCarthy noted “marsupial, fish on line, other figures (?)”; the site is are hard to photograph at high tide, with the water coming up to the base of the rocks (and the rock face is covered in lichen). R.H. Mathews and W.J. Enright didn’t mention the fish, but documented another large figure at the same location: “It is difficult to determine what animal this carving is intended to represent ; except for the length of the tail it resembles the wombat, and was probably intended for that animal. It measures 6 feet 3 inches from the nose to the end of the tail.”

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Aboriginal Sites by National Park

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